Some Halloween/Pom Pom Math

This week I left a bowl of orange and black colored pom-poms representing halloween on D's math shelf.  We used it in multiple ways and had fun while doing these Math activities.

We did some sequencing/patterning.  I created a pattern and D had to identify and continue it.  In the examples shown below the first one is an ABAB pattern and the second one is ABBABB.

We had an activity where D randomly picked a bunch of pom-poms from the bowl and tried to guess whether she had "odd" or "even" number of pom-poms.  Then we verified her guess by grouping the pom-poms in pairs and seeing if there was an odd one left.  This was so much fun and we also ended up counting by 2s to figure out the total pom-poms.

We are working on number facts up to 10 and one of the ways was to partition 10 pom-poms into 2 groups in as many ways as we can.  For example, 10 can be 9 and 1, 8 and 2, 7 and 3, etc.

As you can see in the pictures above, 10 is represented using two colors, 5 orange and 5 black.  This is a RightStart Math way, where numbers are identified using 5 + x.  In the second picture above, 10 is partitioned as 4 and 6.

We then turned this into a game, where I would make D close her eyes and I would take out a few pom-poms out of the 10 and hide those.  D had to tell the hidden number by looking at the number of pom-poms left.   She got this and mastered her 10's facts in no time.  In the example below, she had to guess that I hid two blacks by seeing 8 (5 oranges and 3 blacks) still being left.

We did these activities multiple times this week while having plenty of fun!